EXCHANGE 


. 


22 


THE    USURER 


IN 


ELIZABETHAN     DRAMA 


BY 


ARTHUR   BIVINS   STONEX 


THESIS 

PRESENTED  TO  THE  FACULTY  OF  THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL  OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF    PENNSYLVANIA  IN  PARTIAL 

FULFILMENT  OF  THE   REQUIREMENTS 

FOR  THE  DEGREE  OF  DOCTOR 

OF  PHILOSOPHY 


U  N  J  \ 


[  Reprinted  from  the  Publications  of  the  Modern  Language  Association 
of  America,  vol.  XXXI,  no.  2,  June,  1916] 


THE  USUEEE  IN  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA 

Jeremy  Bentham  in  his  iconoclastic  Defence  of  Usury 
offers  this  plausible  if  somewhat  cynical  explanation  of  the 
well-nigh  universal  unpopularity  of  the  money  lender : 
"  Those  who  have  the  resolution  to  sacrifice  the  present  to 
the  future,  are  natural  objects  of  envy  to  those  who  have 
sacrificed  the  future  to  the  present.  The  children  who  have 
eaten  their  cake,  are  the  natural  enemies  of  the  children 
who  have  theirs."  1  And  similarly  he  explains  the  un- 
happy role  that  is  almost  as  universally  meted  out  to  the 
money  lender  of  drama.  "  It  is  the  business  of  the  drama- 
tist," he  says,  "  to  study  and  to  conform  to,  the  humors  and 
passions  of  those  on  the  pleasing  of  whom  he  depends  for 
his  success.  .  .  Now  I  question  whether,  among  all  the 
instances  in  which  a  borrower  and  a  lender  of  money  have 
been  brought  together  upon  the  stage,  from  the  days  of 
Thespis  to  the  present,  there  ever  was  one,  in  which  the 
former  was  not  recommended  to  favour  in  some  shape  or 
other — either  to  admiration,  or  to  love,  or  to  pity,  or  to 
all  three ; — and  the  other,  the  man  of  thrift,  consigned  to 
infamy."  2 

However  loath  one  may  be  to  accept  this  theory  of  "  the 
business  of  the  dramatist,"  one  has  to  confess  that  his  prac- 
tice often  seems  to  be  what  is  here  stated ;  and  there  is  no 
getting  away  from  the  fact  that  Bentham  has  described  the 
typical  treatment  accorded  both  the  money  lender  and  the 
money  borrower  of  drama,  certainly  of  the  English  drama 
at  its  greatest  period.  Indeed,  a  reading  of  the  more  than 

1  Defence  of  Usury.     Letter  x,  John  Bowring's  edition  of  Bentham's 
Works,  vol.  HI,  p.  17. 
3  Ibid. 

190 


THE    USURER    IN    ELIZABETHAN    DRAMA  191 

sixty  plays  3  in  which  these  characters  appear,  written  dur- 
ing the  ninety  years  following  1553,  reveals  an  analogous 
similarity  of  the  very  devices  used  by  the  dramatists  to 
bring  about  the  desired  conclusion.  Further,  by  reading 
the  plays  in  approximately  chronological  order,  it  is  even 
possible  to  trace  an  apparent  evolution  of  these  devices 
from  a  crude  and  literal  deus  ex  machina  in  the  morality 
plays  to  two  very  popular  deae  ex  machina  who  nourished 
in  numerous  amusing  and  highly  complicated  comedies  of 
the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  heydey.  It  is  also  possible, 
thus,  to  come  to  a  new  realization  may  be,  not  so  much  of 
the  unabashed  persistency  with  which  Elizabethan  drama- 
tists, great  and  small,  "  went  and  took  "  characters,  situa- 
tions, and  whole  plots  from  one  another,  as  of  the  resource- 
ful ingenuity  with  which  they  altered  and  varied  their 
borrowings. 

The  source  of  the  rather  surprisingly  ubiquitous  usurer 
of  English  drama  is  far  from  certain.  William  Poel,  in 
his  Shakespeare  in  the  Theatre,  of  1913,  says,  "  Now  if  we 
go  back  to  the  Latin  comedies  and  consider  the  origin  of 
the  money  lenders,  we  find  a  type  of  character  similar  to 
that  of  Shylock.  Moliere's  Harpagon  who  is  modelled  on 
the  miser  of  Plautus,  has  a  strong  resemblance  to  Barabas 
and  Shylock. "  4  But  the  money  lender  and  the  miser  are 
very  different  personages  in  Latin  comedy.  The  typical 
Plautine  money  lender,  for  example,  is  not  miserly;  and, 
though  the  typical  usurer  of  Elizabethan  drama  is,  it  does 
not  seem  likely  that  he  is  an  exotic  compound  of  these  two 

3  Forty-five  of  the  seventy-one  plays  that  I  have  found  containing 
or   seeming  to   contain   usurers   are  mentioned  or   described   in   one 
connection  or  another  in  this  paper.     In  the  remaining  twenty-six, 
either  the  usurer  is  an  unimportant  character  or  his  usuriousness 
is  incidental  or  even  doubtful. 

4  Page    75. 


192  ARTHUR    BIVINS    STONEX 

quite  distinct  characters.  In  the  few  cases  where  they 
were  certainly  transplanted,  their  differences  were  main- 
tained. The  miser,  Jacques,  of  Jonson's  The  Case  is  Al- 
tered,, far  from  lending  his  money  even  at  usurious  rates, 
hides  it,  as  does  his  Plautine  prototype,  Euclio,  of  the 
Aulularia.5  And  the  usurer,  in  Heywood's  The  English 
Traveler,  who  is  even  to  his  language,  a  translation  of  the 
Banker  in  the  Mostellaria,6  and  who  may  be  taken  as  a  fair 
representation  of  the  typical  Plautine  money  lender,  is 
unlike  his  English  brethren  in  being  portrayed  as  not 
miserly  at  all,  or  as  in  other  ways  objectionable.  Indeed, 
neither  the  Plautine  miser  nor  the  Plautine  money  lender 
is  markedly  similar  to  the  Elizabethan  stage  usurer  in 
the  latter's  almost  distinguishing  characteristics:  his 
villainy,  his  cruelty,  his  loathsomeness,  and  the  contempt 
and  hatred  with  which  he  is  regarded.  In  these  re- 
spects, the  Plautine  procurer  comes  much  closer ;  and  it  is 
possibly  significant  that  these  roles  are  actually  combined 
in  Security  in  Eastward  Hoe.  However,  no  one  of  these 
three  characters  in  Roman  comedy  ever  appears  in  a  plot 
strongly  suggestive  of  those  which  soon  came  to  be  the  al- 
most invariable  vehicles  in  which  the  Elizabethan  usurers 
ran  their  ignominious  careers.  Certainly,  there  seems  to 
be  no  tangible  basis  for  Poel's  assertion  that  in  The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice,  "  Shakespeare  thrusts  the  conventional 
usurer  of  the  old  Latin  comedy  into  a  play  of  love  and 
chance."  7 

After  finding  that  many  Elizabethan  descriptions  of  the 
physical  appearance,  the  dress,  and  the  personal  habits  of 
the  usurer  were  modelled  closely  on  mediaeval  descrip- 

B  For  a  discussion  of  the  indebtedness,  see  Cunningham's  edition 
of  Gifford's  The  Works  of  Ben  Jonson,  1875,  vol.  vi,  pp.  328,  345,  350. 
6  See  Reinhardstoettner's  Plautus,  especially  pp.  469-474. 
"*  TJ.  c.,  p.  70. 


THE    USURER    IN    ELIZABETHAN    DRAMA  193 

tions  of  Avarice,8  particularly  upon  realizing  the  close 
spiritual  affinity  between  the  two,  I  was  led  to  look  to 
the  Avaritia  who  appears  so  often  in  the  morality  plays 
as  the  prototype  of  the  usurer  of  the  later  drama.  And 
here  it  is  possible  to  trace  a  line  of  descent,  but  a  line  so 
faint  and  uncertain  that  it  can  be  suggested  as  only  a  not 
improbable  hypothesis.  Dr.  Walter  Reinicke,  whose  trea- 
tise I  did  not  come  across  until  after  I  had  completed  my 
researches,  says  that  out  of  the  old  morality  drama,  "  Eine 
Menge  typischer  Gestalten  treten  uns  entgegen,  und  unter 
ihnen  befindet  sich  auch  der  Wucherer."  9  He,  however, 
gives  no  example  except  the  Usurer  in  Lodge  and  Greene's 
A  Looting-Glass  for  London  and  England  to  support  his 
statement,  and  he  does  not  suggest  an  evolution  from 
Avarice,  or  any  other  similar  character  of  the  moralities, 
to  this  relatively  late  dramatic  usurer. 

In  the  political-morality  play,  Respublica,  of  1553,  there 
is  an  Avarice  who  has  filled  one  of  his  thirteen  purses 
with  the  "  intresse  of  thys  yeares  userie."  10  And  Greed- 
inesse,  in  George  Wapull's  The  Tide  Tarrieth  No  Man, 
written  probably  much  earlier  than  1576,  the  date  of  the 
earliest  extant  edition,  is  unmistakably  and  aggressively 
a  usurer.  Moreover,  several  other  characters  of  this  old 
play  were  to  appear  in  most  of  the  subsequent  usurer  plays, 
the  prodigal,  here  a  courtier,  his  evil  associates,  symbolized 
in  Corage,  "  the  Vice,"  and  the  broker,  appropriately 

8  Compare,  for  example,  Lodge's  Wits  Miserie,  pp.  27,  28,  Hunterian 
Club  edition,  and  The  Vision  of  Piers  Plowman,  Skeat's  edition,  vol. 
1,  B  Text,   Passus  v,  p.   146,  11.   190-199,  and  The  Romaunt  of  the 
Rose,  11.  207-246.     These  partial  parallels  were  brought  to  my  atten- 
tion in  Professor  E.  D.  McDonald's  An  Example  of  Plagiarism  among 
Elizabethan  Pamphleteers,  Indiana  University  Studies,  vol.  ix,  no.  8. 

9  Der  Wucherer  im  dlteren  englischen  Drama.     Halle  Dissertation, 
1907,  p.  6. 

10  Act  in,  sc.  vi. 


194  AETHUR   BIVINS    STONEX 

named  Hurtfull-Helpe.  And  the  usurer  himself  has  most 
of  the  disagreeable  traits  of  his  successors  and  like  them 
comes  to  a  miserable  end,  though  whether  by  "  a  greate 
fit  "  or  "  the  new  sicknesse  "  is  not  entirely  clear.  There 
is  not  in  the  play,  however,  any  hint  of  the  characteristic 
devices  by  which  the  overthrow  of  the  usurer  was  later  to 
be  accomplished. 

!N"or  were  such  devices  employed  in  the  next  three  plays, 
all  belated  moralities,  in  which  usurers  appear  and  come 
to  richly  merited  confusion,  Robert  Wilson's  The  Three 
Ladies  of  London,  1583,  its  sequel,  The  Three  Lords  and 
Ladies  of  London,  written  between  1585  and  1588,  and 
Lodge  and  Greene's  A  Looking  Glass  for  London  and  Eng- 
land, of  1589. 11  In  the  first  two,  in  company  with  Simony, 
Fraud,  and  Dissimulation,  appears  Usury,  who  has  come 
from  Venice  to  serve  Lady  Lucre.  After  a  series  of  ingeni- 
ously symbolic  acts,  such  as  undoing  Plain-Dealing,  cutting 
the  throat  of  Hospitality,  attempting  to  slay  Liberality,  and 
"  covering  Conscience  with  Fraud's  cloak  very  cunningly," 
he  is  arrested  and  branded  with  "  a  little  x  standing  in  the 
midst  of  a  great  C — to  let  men  understand,  That  you  must 
not  take  above  ten  pound  in  the  hundred  at  any  hand."  12 
The  Usurer  in  A  Looking  Glass  is  less  of  an  allegorical 
abstraction  than  the  Usury  of  the  Wilson  plays,  as  his 
name  possibly  would  indicate.  Instead  of  undoing  Plain- 
Dealing  and  Conscience,  he  ruins  Thrasybulus,  a  young 
gentleman,  and  Alcon,  a  poor  peasant.  And  he  also  comes 
to  a  more  theatric  though  scarcely  as  probable  an  end  by 

11  Unless  the  main  outlines  of  it  have  been  preserved  in  The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice,  we  can  know  nothing  of  the  nature  of  The  Jew,  which 
was  being  acted  at  The  Bull  in  1579,  beyond  Stephen  Gosson's  de- 
scription of  it  as  "  representing  the  greediness  of  worldly  choosers, 
and  the  bloody  minds  of  usurers"  (School  of  Abuse,  Shakespeare 
Society  edition,  p.  29). 

"Dodsley's  Old  Plays,  Hazlitt's  edition,  vol.  vi,  p.  381. 


THE    USURER    IN    ELIZABETHAN    DRAMA  195 

appearing  in  the  last  act  to  return  his  ill-gotten  gains  with 
a  halter  in  one  hand  and  a  dagger  in  the  other,  "  groaning 
in  conscience "  because  he  believes  he  is  "  stumbling " 
over  the  "  bleeding  ghosts  "  of  his  many  victims. 

Marlowe's  Jew  of  Malta,  of  1589-1590,  is  the  play  that 
most  clearly  marks  the  transition  from  the  old  to  the  new 
dramatic  portrayals  of  incarnate  avarice.  For  one  thing, 
the  incarnation  has  at  last  gained  a  man's  name.  From 
Avarice,  through  Greediness,  Usury,  and  a  Usurer,  Barabas 
has  finally  emerged,  and  Shylock  is  soon  to  come.  In  addi- 
tion, Barabas  is  more  than  personified  avarice,  even  if  he 
does  seem  less  a  person  than  the  complex  and  human  Shy- 
lock.  There  is,  nevertheless,  in  the  play  the  intense  seri- 
ousness and  much  of  the  didactic  purpose  and  method  of 
the  earlier  writers;  though  here  again  the  Jew  of  Malta 
points  forward  as  well  as  back.  Several  of  the  merriest  of 
the  later  usurer  comedies,  such  as  Jonson's  and  Middle- 
ton's,  retain  something  of  both  the  earnestness  and 
didactic  intent  of  the  morality  play,  and  such 
creatures  as  Dekker's  Bartervile,  in  //  it  be  not  Good, 
the  Devil  is  in  it,  Massinger's  Overreach,  and  Pertenax, 
of  Francis  Quarles's  The  Virgin  Widow,  have  much 
in  common  with  Barabas,  the  Usurer  of  Lodge  and 
Greene's  creating,  and  the  still  earlier  Greediness,  not 
only  in  the  lesson  and  in  the  frightfulness  of  their  final 
taking  off,  but  in  their  abstractness  as  well.  In  fact  the 
names,  Bartervile  and  Overreach,  show  that  allusive  and 
symbolic  names  did  not  die  out  with  Marlowe ;  Sir  Moth 
Interest,  Mamon,  Lucre,  Hoard,  Scrape,  Gripe,  Blood- 
hound, Hog,  and  Vermine  were  all  to  follow.  Marlowe's 
most  fruitful  contribution,  however,  at  least  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  plot  of  the  usurer  play,  was  the  introduction 
of  a  rebellious  daughter,  a  heroine  who  later  was  to  become 
almost  a  dea  ex  machina  both  in  the  overthrow  of  her 


196  ARTHUR    BIVINS    STONEX 

usurious  father,  the  villain,  and  the  salvation  of  her  prod- 
igal lover,  the  hero. 

Even  this,  which  soon  came  to  be  a  frankly  comic  plot, 
was  nevertheless  related  to  one  of  the  oldest  and  most 
persistent  of  all  the  themes  of  the  morality  drama,  the 
story  and  the  lesson  of  the  prodigal  son.13  A  usurer  is 
often  the  means  by  which  a  prodigal  comes  to  his  downfall 
and  reformation.  The  witty  Thomas  ISTashe  read  this 
interpretation  into  the  original  version  of  the  story  itself: 
"  The  Prodigall-child  in  the  Gospell  is  reported  to  have 
fedde  Hogges,  that  is,  Usurers,  by  letting  them  beguile 
hym  of  his  substance."  14  And  that  the  dramatists  who 
made  the  most  grossly  comic  utilization  of  this  theme,  even 
at  <a  late  date,  were  not  unaware  of  the  sacred  source  is 
possibly  indicated  by  a  passage  in  Shirley's  The  Constant 
Maid,  of  1636  to  1639.  A  usurer  there  warns  a  friend 
not  to  have  "  either  in  arras  or  in  picture  the  story  of  the 
prodigal "  lest  it  frighten  young  gentlemen  from  spending 
their  portions.15  The  prodigal-usurer  play  bears  close  re- 
semblance to  the  Biblical  story  in  another  detail  than  the 
one  suggested  by  JSTashe,  the  often  scandalous  "  happy  end- 
ing." It  must  be  noted,  however,  that  the  fatted  calf  in 
the  Bible  story  is  not  killed  until  after  the  prodigal  repents 
and  returns,  while  in  the  drama  the  reward  usually  pre- 
cedes the  reformation.  In  fact,  Timon  of  Athens  is  almost 
unique  'among  the  plays  in  which  the  usurer  and  the  prod- 
igal appear,  in  that  Timon  pays  the  just  penalty  of  his 
foolish  extravagance.  * 

The  typical  and  excellent  comic  situation  in  the  prod- 
igal-usurer play  is  this:  A  young  spendthrift,  who  has 

"See  Professor  Schelling's  Elizabethan  Drama,  vol.  i,  p.  63. 
"Christs   Teares   Over  Jerusalem,   R.   B.   McKerrow's   edition   of 
Nashe's  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  100. 
"Act  i,  sc.  i. 


THE    TJSUBEE    IN    ELIZABETHAN    DKAMA  197 

become  heavily  indebted,  or  has  actually  lost  his  property, 
to  a  usurer,  comes  into  his  own,  or  the  other's,  property 
by  eloping  with  the  usurer's  daughter  and  by  carrying  off 
anything  else  of  value  he  or  his  mistress  can  lay  hands  on, 
money,  jewels,  or  the  mortgage  itself.  A  somewhat  similar 
though  really  distinct  and  later  device  for  undoing  the 
usurer,  either  bachelor  or  widower,  and  rescuing  the  hero 
was  the  introduction  of  an  heiress  whose  hand  both  should 
seek,  but  of  course  the  prodigal  should  eventually  win. 
There  is  practically  no  end  to  the  dexterous  changes 
that  were  wrought  in  these  two  basic  groupings  of  char- 
acters and  events.  It  is  not,  however,  the  present  purpose 
to  point  out  the  ways  in  which  most  of  the  sixty  and  more 
dramas  conformed  to  these  protean  plots,  nor,  indeed,  to 
enumerate  all  the  permutations  and  combinations  that  re- 
sulted from  them.  It  may  suffice  merely  to  show  some  of 
the  more  important  developments  in  the  growth  of  the  two 
main  plots  and  to  describe  some  of  the  later  plays  that 
illustrate  the  clever  uses  and  changes  of  the  stock  situa- 
tions and  characters  that  came  to  be  the  stage  usurer's 
almost  inseparable  accessories. 

Marlowe's  contribution  to  the  first  of  the  plots  just 
described,  the  introduction  of  a  rebellious  daughter,  was 
slight.  Abigail  in  The  Jew  of  Malta  does  not  elope  with 
one  of  her  father's  debtors  or  with  a  young  prodigal; 
in  fact,  she  enters  a  monastery.  And  her  rebelliousness  is 
only  indirectly  if  at  all  responsible  for  her  father's  final 
overthrow.  But  in  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  four  years 
later,16  the  rebellious  daughter  goes  farther.  She  does 
elope  and  she  carries  with  her  a  part  of  her  father's  treas- 

16  There  are  no  contributions  to  the  usurer  plot  or  to  the  portrayal 
of  the  usurer  in  two  plays  of  1592,  A  Knack  to  Know  a  Knave,  and 
Nobody  and  Somebody,  in  both  of  which  appear  characters  who  are, 
quite  incidentally,  usurers. 


198  AETHUE    BIVINS    STONEX 

lire,  and,  though  she  does  not  bring  about  her  father's 
downfall,  she  and  her  lover  are  connected  with  the  group 
who  do.  And,  again,  though  Jessica  does  not  elope  with 
her  father's  debtor,  nor,  apparently,  with  a  prodigal,17 
both  a  debtor  and  a  prodigal  are  in  the  play.  The  latter, 
moreover,  retrieves  his  fortune  and  that  of  his  friend  by 
marrying  an  heiress.  If  Bassanio  had  borrowed  from 
Shylock,  had  eloped  with  Jessica,  and  had,  in  addition  to 
money  and  jewels,  carried  off  possibly  the  bond  also,  the 
first  type  of  the  usurer-prodigal  plot  would  have  been 
evolved  as  early  as  1594  or  1595.  And  the  elements  at 
least  of  the  other  were  inherent  in  this  play ;  Shylock  might 
have  been  one  of  the  unsuccessful  suitors  for  the  hand  and 
inheritance  of  Portia. 

In  A  Knack  to  Know  an  Honest  Man,  first  acted  in 
1594,  a  rebellious  daughter  once  more  appears  to  thwart 
the  plans  of  a  usurious  father.  She  does  not  elope  with  a 
prodigal  debtor,  but  she  releases  two  prisoners  from  her 
father's  house,  whose  capture  and  confinement  were  appar- 
ently expected  to  yield  profit.  Eventually  she  marries  one 
of  these  young  men,  and  thus  makes  an  appreciable  advance 
toward  the  completion  of  the  earlier  of  the  two  chief  usurer- 
prodigal  plots. 

Further  advances  were  made  in  Wily  Beguiled,  written 
"  not  long  after  1596."  18  The  daughter  of  the  merciless 
usurer,  Gripe,  elopes,  this  time  with  a  poor  scholar,  Sophos. 
He  is  not  one  of  Gripe's  debtors,  and  so  the  final  step  in 
the  development  of  the  most  frequent  later  plot  is  yet  to 
be  taken,  but  there  are  several  innovations  in  this  play 
that  were  to  be  widely  imitated  in  succeeding  usurer  plays. 
For  the  first  time,  the  "  gull  "  appears  as  the  suitor  favored 

"Note,  however,  Lorenzo's  description  of  himself  as  "an  unthrift 
love"   (v,  i,  21). 
"Malone  Society  Reprint,  p.  vii. 


THE    USURER    IN    ELIZABETHAN    DRAMA  199 

by  the  father,  here  in  the  person  of  Peter  Plodall,  son  of 
a  rich  and  conscienceless  extortioner  and  landlord,  a  kind 
of  second  usurer.  Another  innovation,  followed  at  least 
twice,  is  the  introduction  of  a  usurer's  worthy  and  humane 
son,  as  if  in  fulfillment  of  the  Old  Testament  prophecy, 
frequently  in  the  mouths  of  Elizabethan  preachers  and 
reformers,  "  He  that  by  usury  and  unjust  gain  increaseth 
his  substance,  he  shall  gather  it  for  him  that  will  pity  the 
poor."  19  More  often  this  son  is  a  dupe,  comparable  to 
Peter,  or  a  profligate  who  would  be  as  sore  a  thorn  in  the 
usurer's  flesh  as  a  generous  son.  Another  means  of  undoing 
the  villain,  an  accomplice  who  turns  traitor,  though  remi- 
niscent of  Ithamore  in  The  Jew  of  Malta,  may  fairly  be 
regarded  as  a  further  innovation  made  by  Wily  Beguiled, 
especially  because  the  accomplice  is  here  a  rascally  lawyer 
and  because  he  is  woven  more  closely  into  the  plot  by  being 
made  another  discomfited  wooer  of  the  heroine.  More- 
over, false  magic  is,  for  the  first  time  I  believe,  introduced. 
In  this  play  Robin  Goodfellow  appears  as  a  devil,  to  em- 
barrass the  elopement  of  hero  and  heroine,  but  he  is,  need- 
less to  say,  unsuccessful.  Later  and  successful  utilizations 
of  false  magic  were  for  the  purpose  of  undoing  or  convert- 
ing the  usurer.  The  feature  of  Wily  Beguiled  that  is  used 
most  frequently  in  later  usurer  plays,  however,  is  the  final 
repentance  of  the  usurer  and  his  reconciliation  to  the  en- 
forced son-in-law  and  the  erring  daughter. 

In  the  next  usurer  play  of  which  I  have  knowledge, 
William  Haughton'is  Englishmen  for  my  Money,  of  1597- 
1598,  the  rebellious  daughter  motif  has  reached  its  full 
development.  In  fact,  the  situation  has  been  so  cleverly 
complicated  that  one  is  compelled  to  wonder  if  some  simpler 
form  had  not  intervened,  or  if  some  foreign  model  had  not 

"Proverbs,  xxvin,  8. 


200  ARTHUR    BIVINS    STONEX 

been  utilized.20  Pisaro,  the  usurer,  has  three  daughters 
whom  he  plans  to  marry  to  three  rich  foreign  merchants. 
The  daughters  are  in  love  with  as  many  young  English 
prodigals  who  have  "  pawned  .  .  .  their  livings  and  their 
lands  "  21  to  Pisaro.  The  action  of  the  play — and  there 
is  a  plenty — consists  in  devices  for  outwitting  the  father 
and  the  three  foreign  dupes  by  the  elopement  of  the  daugh- 
ters with  the  three  English  debtors.  At  the  end,  as  in  Wily 
Beguiled,  the  usuring  father  repents,  accepts  his  unwel- 
come sons-in-law,  and  restores  their  property  to  them. 
If  Thomas  Heywood's  The  Fair  Maid  of  the  Exchange, 

20  So  far  as  I  can  discover,  no  source  has  been  found  for  any  one 
of  these  plays,  or  at  least  for  the  portions  of  them  that  would 
thus  seem  to  reveal  a  natural  evolution  of  the  rebellious  daughter 
device.  What  Marlowe  may  have  called  upon  beyond  his  own  fertile 
imagination  is  not  known.  Curiously,  the  Jessica-Lorenzo  episode 
is  not  a  part  of  the  Italian  novel,  II  Pecorone,  usually  regarded  as 
the  ultimate  source  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice;  and,  though  a  fairly 
close  analogue  of  the  episode  has  been  pointed  out  in  Massuccio  di 
Salerno's  Fourteenth  Tale — page  319  of  the  New  Variorum  edition  of 
The  Merchant  of  Venice — there  is  no  other  evidence  that  Shakespeare 
was  familiar  with  the  work  of  that  author.  The  editor  of  the 
Malone  Society  reprint  of  A  Knack  to  Know  an  Honest  Man  thinks 
that  the  name  of  one  of  the  characters  "  suggests  the  possibility  of 
an  Italian  source "  ( p.  xi )  ;  and  the  editor  of  the  same  Society's 
reprint  of  Wily  Beguiled  does  no  more  than  point  out  certain  obvious 
imitations  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice.  Dr.  Albert  C.  Baugh,  of  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania,  after  a  most  painstaking  search,  is 
unable  to  find  a  source  of  the  main  plot  of  Englishmen  for  My  Money. 
The  "possibility  of  an  Italian  source"  of  any  or  all  of  these  plays 
is  strong,  but  thus  far  I  have  found  none,  nor  have  the  several 
scholars,  intimately  familiar  with  the  Italian  literature  of  the 
period,  to  whom  Dr.  Baugh  and  I  have  appealed.  Of  course  the 
prodigal,  and  the  rebellious  daughter,  especially  the  daughter  who 
refuses  to  marry  the  man  of  parental  choice,  are  old  and  persistent 
characters  in  literature.  It  may  not  be  too  much  to  credit  the 
slight  if  dexterous  modifications  of  their  r6les  to  meet  the  exigencies 
of  the  usurer  play  to  a  combination  of  English  inventiveness  and 
eclecticism. 

aAct  i,  sc.  i. 


THE    USURER    IN    ELIZABETHAN    DRAMA  201 

probably  written  in  1602,  or,  still  better,  Kobert  Tailor's 
The  Hog  Hath  Lost  His  Pearl,  of  1613,  had  only  preceded 
Haughton's  comedy,  it  would  have  been  possible  to  show 
an  entirely  regular  evolution  of  the  role  of  the  rebellious 
daughter  in  the  usurer  play  from  the  first  uncertain  step 
in  The  Jew  of  Malta  to  the  delightful  complexity  of  Eng- 
lishmen for  My  Money.  Moll,  a  character  in  the  subplot 
of  Heywood's  play,  and  daughter  of  the  usurer,  Berry, 
marries  Bernard,  in  debt  to  her  father  and  frowned  upon 
by  him.  At  the  end  Berry  relents,  receives  the  profligate 
son-in-law,  and  returns  to  him  his  mortgage.  In  Tailor's 
play,  the  hero,  Haddit,  a  young  prodigal  whose  land  is  also 
mortgaged  to  a  usurer,  Hog,  also  carries  off  the  daughter 
and  some  of  the  usurer's  money  as  well,  and  is  likewise 
pardoned  and  accepted  by  the  eventually  reformed  Hog. 
Here  there  is  false  magic  in  the  form  of  "  spirits  "  con- 
jured up  to  aid  in  the  elopement  and  the  robbery.  One  of 
the  last  of  the  usurer  plays  to  appear  before  the  closing  of 
the  theatres,  Richard  Brome's  The  Damoiselle,  or  the  New 
Ordinary,  written  in  1637  or  1638,  makes  use  of  the  same 
general  plot  and  group  of  characters.  Vermine,  a  late  and 
loathsome  descendant  of  Avarice,  has  ruined  by  egregious 
usury,  one  Brokeall.  After  many  complications,  Brokeall's 
son  marries  the  usurer's  run-away  daughter,  gains  his 
father-in-law's  reluctant  blessing,  and  regains  his  father's 
property  as  dowry.  The  usurer's  son  reappears  also,  here 
a  combination  of  the  two  most  persistent  traits  of  that 
character,  gullibility  and  profligacy.  These  three  plays 
may  be  regarded  as  exemplifications  of  the  simplest  form 
of  the  plot  containing  the  usurer,  his  rebellious  daughter, 
and  the  prodigal,  and  come  logically,  if  not  chronologi- 
cally, before  Haughton's  triple  complication  of  it.  To  take 
further  liberties  with  the  chronological  order,  Shackerly 
Marmion's  A  Fine  Companion,  of  1633,  marks  the  next 


202  AETHUR    BIVINS    STONEX 

stage  of  development.  Here  the  usurer,  Littlegood,  has 
two  daughters  whom  he  plans  to  marry  to  two  men  of 
property,  one  of  them  Dotario,  an  old  miser.  However, 
Dotario's  two  needy  nephews,  Aurelio  and  a  prodigal, 
Careless,  succeed  by  various  stratagems  in  marrying  the 
two  daughters,  and  not  only  are  they  reconciled  to  the 
reluctant  father-in-law,  but  Careless  receives  back  his  for- 
feited lands  and  Aurelio  becomes  Dotario's  avowed  heir. 
Dotario  thus  plays  a  role  somewhat  similar  to  the  senior 
Plodall  in  Wily  Beguiled,  in  being,  if  not  precisely  a  usurer, 
yet  an  undesirable  and  avaricious  person  whose  overthrow 
is  as  welcomed  as  the  usurer's,  especially  when  he  stands 
in  the  way  of  a  charming  maiden  and  her  needy  lover.  A 
still  closer  adherence  to  the  plot  of  Wily  Beguiled  is  to  be 
found  in  William  Cartwright's  The  Ordinary,  of  1634. 
Here,  again,  the  one  usurer  has  the  customary  rebellious 
and  attractive  daughter,  and  the  other,  the  almost  as  fre- 
quent foolish  son.  It  is  planned  that  these  two  shall  marry, 
but  the  hero,  whose  father  in  this  case  has  been  undone  by 
the  first  usurer,  tricks  the  son  of  the  other  into  marrying 
the  daughter's  maid,  succeeds,  of  course,  in  marrying  the 
daughter  himself,  and  thus,  in  addition  to  humiliating  both 
usurers,  recovers  his  ancestral  estates.  The  more  frequent 
disposal  of  the  usurer's  son  is  to  marry  him  off  to  a  cour- 
tesan, a  fate,  indeed,  sometimes  meted  out  to  the  usurer 
himself.  Such  is  the  case  in  Middleton's  well-known  A 
Trick  to  Catch  the  Old  One,  of  1606,  the  first  play,  I 
believe,  in  which  two  usurers  appear.  Here  the  prodigal, 
Witgood,  recovers  his  mortgages  by  persuading  a  usurious 
uncle,  Lucre,  into  believing  that  he  is  about  to  marry  an 
heiress — in  reality  his  mistress.  The  other  usurer,  Hoard, 
is  cozened  into  marrying  the  woman,  who  seems  to  have 
deserved  a  better  fate,  and  Witgood  recovers  the  mort- 
gages from  Lucre  and  marries  Hoard's  niece. 


THE    USURER    IN    ELIZABETHAN    DRAMA  203 

This  play,  however,  has  made  use  of  a  device  that  really 
should  be  regarded  as  part  of  what  may  be  called  the 
second  main  usurer  plot.  This  second  type  appeared  first 
in  Jack  Drum's  Entertainment,  written  probably  as  early 
as  1600.  Here  the  usurer,  whose  "  great  nose  "  and  some 
of  whose  speeches  recall  Shylock,22  and  whose  villainy  re- 
minds one  less  specifically  of  Barabas,  is  a  bachelor  and 
suitor  for  the  hand  of  a  young  heiress.  The  needy  hero 
appears  as  her  true-love,  however,  and  achieves  the  two- 
fold purpose  of  practically  all  usurer  plays,  the  confusion 
of  the  usurer  and  the  financial  salvation  of  himself,  by  the 
eventual  marriage  of  the  rich  heroine.  This  second  plot 
is  used  in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  The  Scornful  Lady, 
of  1609,  with  the  substitution  of  "  a  rich  widow  "  for  the 
young  heiress,  and  with  the  addition,  borrowed  from  the 
other  type  of  play,  of  making  the  prodigal  the  usurer's 
(rather  willing)  victim.  In  fact,  the  amazing  final  con- 
version of  the  usurer  Morecraft,  against  which  Dryden 
protested  in  his  "  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy,"  may  be  evi- 
dence of  a  still  further  attempt  to  make  use  of  elements 
in  the  older  type  of  plot.23  A  variation  of  this  device  for 
the  overthrow  of  the  bachelor  or  widower  usurer  forms  a 
sub-plot  for  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  Rule  a  Wife  and 
Have  a  Wife,  of  1624 ;  it  is  the  main  plot  of  Shirley's  The 
Wedding,  of  1626,  save  that  the  successful  lover  is  here 
the  companion,  not  the  debtor  of  the  usurer;  and  it  plays 
no  small  part  in  Shirley's  The  Constant  Maid,  of  1636- 
1639. 

In  this  last  play,  however,  are  to  be  found  several  varia- 
tions of  older  roles  and  situations  that  had  by  1636  become 

22  See  Simpson's  School  of  Shakespeare,  vol.  n,  p.  208. 

23  It  has  been  suggested  that  Morecraft  owes  something  to  Demea 
of  the  Adelphi.     See  Variorum  Edition  of  the  Works  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  edited  by  R.  W.  Bond,  vol.  i,  p.  360. 


204  ARTHUR    BIVINS    STONEX 

common  property.  As  early  as  Fletcher  and  Rowley's  Wit 
at  Several  Weapons,  of  1608,  the  function  of  the  rebellious 
daughter  had  been  transferred  to  the  equally  oppressed 
and  resourceful  niece  and  ward  of  the  usurer.  The  rich 
gull,  as  intended  husband,  and  the  poor  scholar,  as  suc- 
cessful lover,  reappear  in  this  play  nevertheless.  The 
usurious  guardian  and  the  elusive  ward  persist  in  Jonson's 
The  Staple  of  News,  1625,  and  in  his  The  Magnetic  Lady, 
1632,  in  D'Avenant's  The  Wits,  of  1634,  and  in  Shirley's 
omnium  gatherum,  The  Constant  Maid,  of  1636.  And  the 
foolish  or  loathsome  intended  husband  and  the  successful 
prodigal,  or  at  least  poor  lover,  are  equally  persistent. 

Ward  and  niece  did  not  exhaust  the  possibilities  of  the 
role  of  the  rebellious  daughter.  The  usurer's  wife  had  been 
cleverly  utilized  as  far  back  as  1603  in  Middleton's 
Michaelmas  Term.  Here  the  young  prodigal,  Easy,  loses 
his  property  to  the  usurer,  Quomodo,  but  as  if  in  return, 
wins  the  affections  of  the  usurer's  wife.  Quomodo,  ignor- 
ant of  this  fact,  feigns  death,  to  see  how  his  widow  and 
worthless  son  will  bear  their  loss.  The  wife  promptly 
marries  Easy,  and  through  the  gullibility  of  the  son  and 
the  chicanery  of  her  husband's  traitorous  accomplice,  is 
enabled  to  return  Easy's  money  to  him.  Just  who  retains 
the  lady  after  Quomodo's  indignant  return  to  life  is  not 
clear.  This  making  a  cuckold  of  the  usurer  was  another 
much  relished  punishment.  The  next  year  it  was  em- 
ployed in  Eastward  Hoe;  and  in  Westward  Hoe,  of 
1603  or  1604,  the  usurer,  Tenterhooke,  escapes  it  only 
by  the  last-hour  faithfulness  of  his  wife,  as  a  reward 
possibly  for  his  exceptional  virtues.  He  is  one  of  the 
very  few  kindly  disposed  usurers  in  the  drama  of  the 
period,  and  is  almost  the  only  decent  character  in  the 
play  in  which  he  appears.  The  earliest  use  of  this  highly 
popular  humiliation  of  the  usurer  that  I  have  found  is  in 


THE    USURER    IN    ELIZABETHAN    DRAMA  205 

Chapman's  revolting  The  Blind  Beggar  of  Alexandria,, 
1596.  Inasmuch  as  the  bigamous  usurer  inflicts  this  pun- 
ishment upon  himself,  in  his  second  role  of  Count  Hermes, 
he  can  scarcely  be  regarded  as  having  suffered  severely. 
In  No  Wit,  No  Help  Like  a  Woman's,  of  1613,  Middleton 
introduced  a  real  widow  of  a  usurer  to  compensate  the 
wife  of  one  of  her  deceased  husband's  victims  and  to  marry 
the  customary  young  prodigal,  who  is  here  a  needy  brother- 
in-law  of  the  victim. 

The  wife  of  an  enforced  marriage  was  twice  used,  first 
in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  bewildering  play,  The  Night 
Walker  or  the  Little  Thief,  of  1614,  where  as  in  The  Hog 
Hath  Lost  His  Pearl,  of  the  year  before,  false  magic  is 
also  employed  to  bring  about  the  usurer's  overthrow  and 
conversion.  And  to  the  same  ends,  his  deserted  wife  is  also 
introduced.  An  unwilling  bride  and  an  illegitimate  child 
were  similarly  utilized  in  Richard  Brome's  The  English 
Moor,  or  the  Mock  Marriage,  of  1636;  and  the  year  after 
The  Night  Walker,  in  a  play  called  The  Honest  Lawyer, 
written  by  an  unknown  "S.  S.,"  false  magic,  robbery,  a 
prodigal's  deserted  wife  sought  as  mistress  by  the  usurer, 
the  revelation  of  attempted  murder,  and  the  usurer's 
worthy  son  were  all  marshaled  to  save  the  prodigal  and  to 
overwhelm  the  usurer,  Gripe,  whose  name  even  is  bor- 
rowed.24 A  more  edifying  reformation  through  the  agency 
of  another  worthy  son  is  wrought  in  Thomas  May's  The 
Old  Couple,  of  1619.  Here  the  usurer,  Earthworm,  is 
publicly  credited  through  the  agency  of  the  son  with 
charitable  deeds  really  performed  by  the  son,  and  is  so 
raised  in  general  esteem  thereby  that  the  neighbors  come 
to  his  aid  when  his  dwelling  catches  fire.  This  mark  of 


a*Wycherley  also  gives  this  name  to  a  usurer.     See  his  Love  in  a 
Word. 


206  ARTHUR  BIVINS '  STONEX 

affection  touches  Earthworm's  heart  and  wins  him  away 
from  his  evil  courses. 

The  device  for  converting  the  usurer  in  the  above  play 
is  far  removed,  it  must  be  granted,  from  the  device  of  the 
more  typical  plots,  for  a  worthy  son  fulfils  the  functions 
of  the  rebellious  daughter;  and  the  usurer  is  not  humil- 
iated, gulled,  or  robbed.  And  John  Cook's  Greene  s  Tu 
Quoque,  or  the  City  Gallant,,  of  1609  to  1612,  also  departs 
from  the  more  usual  plays,  for  retribution  is  as  tardy  as 
in  Middleton's  No  Wit,  No  Help  Like  a  Woman's.  In 
this  play  compensation  is  afforded  by  a  nephew  who  in 
a  sense  combines  two  roles,  that  of  Middleton's  widow  and 
that  of  the  persistent  foolish  son  of  the  usurer.  Staines,  a 
prodigal,  has  forfeited  his  property  to  a  usurer,  Whirlpit. 
The  usurer  dies  soon  after  the  beginning  of  the  play  and 
leaves  his  wealth  to  his  nephew,  Bubble,  who  was  at  the 
first  Staines's  servant.  Staines  then  becomes  Bubble's 
servant  and  steward  and  by  fraud  and  by  leading  Bubble 
into  profligacy  secures  not  only  his  own  forfeited  estate 
but  practically  tall  that  Bubble  has  inherited.  Thus  at  the 
end  the  characters  are  returned  to  their  proper  status; 
and  the  scandal  of  a  gentleman  acting  as  a  servant  and  of 
a  servant  posing  as  >a  gentleman  is  saved  by  the  gentleman's 
dexterous  cheating.  Another  career  in  this  highly  immoral 
play  is  more  conventional  and,  if  possible,  more  disgraceful. 
There  is  a  second  prodigal,  Spendall,  who  by  gambling, 
debauchery,  and  silly  lavishness  runs  through  the  property 
that  has  been  given  him  by  his  former  master,  a  mercer. 
He  is  then  rescued  from  the  imprisonment  he  manifestly 
deserves  by  the  inevitable  rich  widow. 

Before  passing  to  those  plays  that  represent  the  plagiar- 
istic  climax  of  the  usurer  drama,  it  may  be  of  interest 
to  analyze  in  some  detail  the  elements  in  one  of  the  most 
deviously  compounded  and  justly  celebrated  of  all  the 


THE    USURER    IN    ELIZABETHAN    DRAMA  207 

plays  of  the  class,  Massinger's  A  New  Way  to  Pay  Old 
Debts,  first  acted  sometime  before  1626.  Sir  Giles  Over- 
reach, in  the  magnitude  of  his  extortions,  the  terribleness 
of  his  villainy,  his  willingness  to  use  his  daughter's  charms 
to  gain  his  ends,  and  his  final  attempt  to  kill  her,  in  his 
seldom  failing  resourcefulness,  his  dignity,  and  in  his 
fearful  fate  reminds  one  inevitably  of  Marlowe's  usurious 
villain,  Banabas.  His  early  love  for  his  daughter,  and 
her  elopement,  on  the  other  hand,  go  back  unmistakably 
to  The  Merchant  of  Venice.  The  usurer's  traitorous  ac- 
complice, Marrall,  had  a  possible  prototype  in  Ithamore  of 
The  Jew  of  Malta,,  or  more  possibly  in  Churms  of  Wily 
Beguiled.  Wellborn,  "  a  Prodigal,"  who  repents  his  wild 
ways  and  promises  reform,  after  his  lands  have  been  re- 
gained by  fraud,  had  become  a  familiar  character  in  the 
usurer  play.  His  "  new  way  to  pay  old  debts,"  indeed  is 
not  so  very  new,  for  the  trick  of  making  his  creditors  think 
he  is  about  to  marry  "  a  rich  Widow  "  (who  needs  no  in- 
troduction to  the  readers  of  this  paper)  had  been  utilized 
by  Witgood  in  Middleton's  A  Trick  to  Catch  the  Old  One 
nineteen  years  before.25  Overreach's  extortionate  de- 
vices are  not  unlike  those  of  the  usurer,  Shafton,  in 
Heywood's  A  Woman  Killed  With  Kindness.26  And  there 
are  even  verbal  reminiscences  of  an  earlier  play.27  Never- 
theless, Massinger  has  combined  these  themes,  characters, 
and  situations  so  deftly,  has  given  to  his  hero-villain  so 
much  eloquence  'and  Marlowesque  impressiveness,  and  has 

25  For  a  discussion  of  Massinger's  indebtedness   see  E.   Koeppell, 
Quellen-Studien,  p.    138.     Brander   Matthews,  however,  says  "  it  is 
not  at  all  unlikely  that  Massinger  may  have  owed  nothing  to  Mid- 
dleton's play  "  ( C.  M.  Gayley's  Representative  English  Comedies,  vol. 
m,  p.  316). 

26  Cf.  in,  i,  58  of  the  latter  play  with  n,  i,  2-48  of  Massinger's. 

27  Cf. 

.    .    .    and  when  mine  ears  are  pierced  with  widows'  cries, 
And  undone  orphans  wash  with  tears  my  threshold, 


208  ARTHUR    BIVINS    STONEX 

written  all  in  such  adequate  verse  that  he  must  be  given 
credit  for  having  written  not  only  an  original  but  a 
thoroughly  fine  play. 

We  have  seen  the  growth  and  the  almost  endless  rami- 
fication of  two  fairly  distinct  usurer  plots,  that  is,  devices 
for  overthrowing  and  humiliating  the  usurer ;  the  introduc- 
tion of  >a  rebellious  daughter  who  characteristically  elopes 
with  her  father's  prodigal  debtor,  and  the  introduction  of 
an  heiress,  maiden  or  rich  widow,  in  the  pursuit  of  whose 
hand  and  fortune  the  usurer  is  ignominiously  defeated, 
ordinarily  by  one  of  his  young  prodigal  victims.  The 
last  logical  step  in  the  evolution  of  the  usurer  plots  was, 
of  course,  the  combining  of  these  two  devices  into  one  plot. 
Several  of  the  plays  already  described  have  in  one  way  or 
other  come  close  to  effecting  the  inevitable  union,  but  so 
far  as  I  can  discover,  the  first  to  do  so  completely  was 
Rowley  (and  Middleton's)  A  Match  at  Midnight,  "  re- 
vised "  in  1623. 

In  this  play  the  crafty  and  repellent  usurer,  Blood- 
hound, has  a  daughter,  Moll,  whom  he  intends  to  bestow 
as  a  reward  upon  his  loathsome  accomplice,  Earlock,  a 
scrivener.  Moll,  however,  elopes  in  due  course  and,  as 
a  culminating  bit  of  poetic  justice,  carries  off  the  mortgage 
on  her  lover's  property.  And,  in  addition,  Bloodhound 
loses  the  ubiquitous  "  rich  widow."  Other  old  familiar 
faces  appear.  There  is  the  usurer's  foolish  son  who  meets 
the  approved  fate  of  marriage  to  a  trull.  And  the  profligate 
son  appears,  too,  but  his  role  is  given  a  somewhat  original 
turn.  He,  of  course,  wooes,  and  for  a  time  seems  to  win 

(New  Way  to  Pay  Old  Delts,  iv,  i,  127-128)  and 
You  lothe  the  widow's  or  the  orphans  tears 
Should  wash  your  pavements,  or  their  piteous  cries 
Ring  in  your  roofs. 

(Jonson's  Volpane,  i,  i,  50-52). 


THE    TTSUKEK,    IN    ELIZABETHAN    DKAMA  209 

the  widow  his  father  is  courting,  but  when  the  "  widow's  " 
husband  unexpectedly  appears, — shade  of  Quomodo  in 
Michaelmas  Term — the  prodigal  repents  and  reforms  with- 
out his  accustomed  reward. 

This  ingenious  compilation  was  not  long  denied  the 
flattery  of  imitation.  In  1625,  Shirley  hit  upon  it  for  the 
framework  of  his  Love  Tricks,  but  not  without  notable 
contributions  of  his  own.  The  usurer,  Ruf  aldo,  has  an  even 
more  humiliating  love  venture,  and,  incredible  as  it  may 
seem,  the  young  prodigal  who  carries  off  his  daughter  also 
plays  the  role  of  the  elusive  heiress  whom  the  usurer  would 
wed,  and  thus  is  able  in  his  own  person  to  achieve  a  double 
victory  over  the  villain  and  to  give  him  an  unmerciful 
trouncing  besides.  This  amazing  denouement  is  thus  ef- 
fected. Rufaldo  is  betrothed  to  Selina,  who  runs  away  dis- 
guised in  the  clothes  of  her  brother  Antonio.  He,  in  love 
with  the  usurer's  closely  watched  daughter,  Hilaria,  gains 
access  to  her  and  to  her  father's  house  by  donning  in  turn 
his  sister  Selina's  clothes,  and  appearing  as  the  usurer's 
bride.  After  the  mock  wedding,  the  beating  takes  place. 
Antonio  and  Hilaria  are  made  happy,  and  we  learn  that 
in  the  meantime  Selina  has  married  her  true-love  Infor- 
tunio. 

The  possibilities  of  this  combination  of  plots  evidently 
appealed  to  Shirley,  for  in  The  Constant  Maid,  written 
sometime  between  1636  and  1639,  he  recurred  to  it,  but 
this  time  with  scarcely  so  original  variations.  It  is  a  niece 
and  ward  in  this  play  who  finally  eludes  the  clutches  of 
her  usurious  uncle  and  guardian,  Hornet,  to  marry  the 
young  Playfair.  Hornet,  moreover,  loses  a  rich  widow  as 
usual,  but  under  circumstances  less  ingeniously  humiliat- 
ing and  painful  than  those  utilized  in  the  preceding  play. 
One  notes  with  surprise  that  the  rich  widow  is  not  be- 
stowed on,  possibly,  one  of  Playfair's  profligate  compan- 


210  ARTHUR  BIVINS  STONEX 

ions;  Shirley,  with  unwonted  inattention  to  opportunity 
and  precedent,  seems  to  leave  her  quite  unprovided  for  at 
the  end  of  the  play.  And  one  misses  also  the  usurer's 
foolish  son  with  his  accustomed  bride,  or  indeed,  a  profli- 
gate son  who  could  have  taken  care  of  the  widow. 

If  only  these  had  been  there,  and  a  group  of  sharpers 
borrowed  from  Middleton,  one  or  two  corrupt  Serjeants 
and  justices,  a  rascally  lawyer,  a  broker,  a  vile  scrivener 
possibly  as  the  daughter's  intended  husband,  and,  may  be, 
a  starved  servant,  pale  descendant  of  the  famished  Launce- 
lot  Gobbo,  this  play  could  have  stood  not  only  as  an  epitome 
of  three-fourths  of  the  usurer  plays  of  the  preceding  ninety 
years,  but  also  as  a  concluding  illustration  of  the  eclectic 
and  synthetic  practices  of  certain  Elizabethan  compound- 
ers  of  plays. 

ARTHUR  BIVINS  STONEX. 


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